The Ohio Ballot Board has adopted new language for the ballot summary that voters will see when they cast ballots on a proposed redistricting constitutional amendment. This happened after the Ohio Supreme Court ruled the original language defective, saying it misleads voters. There was a lot of debate between Democrats and Republican members of the board over the new summary. Republican Board member Keith Faber said it’s not possible to make this summary easy to understand.
Faber: We can either put the complete language or do a summary. But if we do a summary, we can’t get it wrong. But if we do a summary at this point, I fear we will get it wrong because frankly, I didn’t draft the confusing selection process that’s in the constitutional amendment.
But Ann Henkener with Voters First, the group that’s backing the proposed amendment, says there’s no reason why the board couldn’t have used shorter, more concise language, especially when the court did.
Henkener: It was very easy for the court to do that. It seemed to be very confusing for the ballot board to be able to do that. It would have been very easy to adopt the court’s language, it was very clear.
Ohio voters will get their say on the issue soon. Absentee ballots will be going out later this month.
